Russian

Here is the Russian Alphabet, and as you may have noticed the letters are not the Latin ones, we Russians call them Cyrillic letters, as Russian is written in Cyrillic scripts. The Russian alphabet has 33 letters. It was created in the 9th century by the Saints Cyril and Methodius and originally contained 43 letters. The good thing is that some Russian letters are identical to the Latin ones such as: A, E, K, M, O, T.
Some are pronounced absolutely different. For example Russian letter В is pronounced as V, C as S, P as R, H as N, Y as U, Х as H.
There are some completely new letters which do not have any resemblance with Latin ones: Б, Г, Д, Ё, Ж, З, И, Й, Л and others.

Below is the table with the Russian letters which I think will be very helpful. The first column will be the letter itself (A a), the second column will be the name of the letter, how it is pronounced (A), the third column will be the sound, which the letter actually makes [а].
As I always say to my students it is of course good to know all the letters and how they are pronounced when spelling words out loud, but the most important thing is to know which sound the letter gives, as when speaking you will use the sounds and the good thing about Russian letters is that they give just one sound, they do not have different sounds (see the table below), so the letter A will be always [а], nothing else! Isn’t that fantastic? And finally in the fourth column you will find similar English sounds that Russian letters make (like the long ‘a’ in “car”).
Well, don’t worry if you make mistakes, you are making the first steps and if there is anything you would like to ask you are welcome!
After you become familiar with the Russian letters I will give you a few words to read! Good luck! Continue reading →

Learning Russian can open up many doors when travelling or building relationships. It is an excellent language to learn, it is unique to the more common languages that people usually choose to learn, such as French, German and Spanish and it is the ideal choice for anyone with a keen interest in getting to know people, culture and food.

Let us consider importance of learning Russian. I guess everybody knows that learning any foreign language widens his or her horizons, as while we are learning a language we are destined to know its culture, history, literature, people, customs and traditions and what not, isn’t that a good reason? I am sure it makes a person think deeper and understand many things even in politics and the surrounding world. Continue reading →

Meet our Russian tutor, Zarema Remnant

Do you want a new challenge? Do you think life has become too boring and mundane? Cheer up! I have found you a new challenge! Start learning Russian! Are you scared? No need for that! You will find learning Russian so interesting, it will be like a big adventure, full of fun, amusement and delight! Continue reading →